Ina Parlina, Jakarta – The Attorney General's Office (AGO) has accused the nation's antigraft body of facilitating what it claimed to be the alleged entrapment of a prosecutor who was recently arrested for alleged extortion.
Junior attorney for internal monitoring Marwan Effendi told The Jakarta Post on Friday that the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) should have prevented Tangerang prosecutor Dwi Seno Wijanarko from carrying-out the extortion when it received a tip-off on the case. "[Seno] was framed. He was not caught red-handed," he said.
Seno was caught accepting money from an unidentified man said to be working for state lender bank Bank Rakyat Indonesia in Bintaro, Tangerang regency, Banten province, last week. The KPK confiscated a brown envelope containing the alleged bribe money.
Marwan said that the AGO's internal investigation found a number of irregularities in the case, including a mismatch with regard to the amount of money received by Seno. The KPK claimed he received Rp 50 million (about US$5650), but Marwan said he heard the amount was lower. "The KPK should be transparent about this," he said.
Seno's arrest served as another blow to the AGO, which has long been mired by graft scandals and perceived by many as corrupt.
He was not the first prosecutor to be arrested by the anti-graft body for breaking the law. In September 2008, the Corruption Court sentenced state prosecutor Urip Tri Gunawan to 20 years in prison for accepting bribes from businesswoman Artalyta Suryani in exchange for dropping an investigation into tycoon Sjamsul Nursalim's involvement in the high-profile graft case surrounding alleged embezzlement of the Bank Indonesia liquidity support (BLBI).
A number of prosecutors, including Cirus Sinaga, are allegedly involved in another high-profile bribery case centered on Gayus Tambunan, who claims he paid prosecutors billions of rupiah to water down charges leveled against him before he was acquitted by a Tangerang court in 2009.
Marwan said the new antigraft chief Busyro Muqoddas must evaluate the methods used by the KPK to arrest suspects. The commission, he added, could be considered as being complicit in the crime as stipulated by the Criminal Code.
"Such a charge would give the KPK a lesson that law enforcers should not enforce the law by breaking it," he said.
KPK deputy chairman M. Jasin dismissed Marwan's statement. "The allegation is not true because the KPK tried to prevent the extortion from happening. We have the evidence," he told the Post. He declined to elaborate further.
The anti-graft body's no-nonsense approach in bringing corrupt officials, including several law enforcers, to court had allegedly strained relations between the agency and other law enforcing institutions, including the National Police and the AGO.
Though they have publicly vowed to join hands in fighting corruption, the antagonism between the KPK and other institutions is visible. In 2009, the Constitutional Court played a tape that showed an alleged attempt by the AGO and the National Police to incriminate KPK deputy chairmen Bibit Samad Rianto and Chandra Hamzah, which drew protests from the public.
Last month, the AGO dropped the case against the two KPK officials for the sake of public interest, but it denied that the cases against the pair had been fabricated.